You Are Not Being Punished

I know a lot of women with fertility problems.  They all seem to think of their lack of conceiving abilities is directly linked to bad past behavior.  This makes me so sad for them.  Just think of it like this, serial killers have babies, child molesters have babies, rapists have babies.  If those three groups of awful people can have children, then nothing in your past would prevent a higher power from letting you be a parent.

“… but I just don’t go to church enough. That must be why!” – Atheists have babies

“… I was so mean to my mother when I was younger…” – Who wasn’t?  Teenagers are supposed to do that.  I am fully prepared to deal with a crazy teenage girl, hopefully, one day.  And I will be glad that I have her to yell at me.  Or maybe I’ll have boys and they will be nice to me always? Is that how it works? I won’t mind either way!

“…I had a glass of wine the other night, that’s why this try didn’t work.” – Drunk, crackheaded, homeless ladies get pregnant ALL THE TIME.  And have you seen Mad Men?  Ladies back in the day drank through the entire pregnancy.  (This is not condoning this behavior, just saying that you beating yourself up about a glass of wine is silly).  

There is no reason to think that someONE or someTHING would ever punish someone with infertility.  Infertility is just something that happens.  You know how some people are born with chronic ear infections, or clubbed feet. or albinoism?  There is nothing different about those things and what we struggle with, except what we are born with keeps us from conceiving and their problems keep them from hearing, walking or getting a tan. 

Relax.  Don’t worry about who’s controlling your destiny.  You are the one in control.  Treatments may not work, that’s true, but if you continue to sit around being sad and wondering why this is happening to you, you will make yourself sick and depressed.  There is no answer to that question.  Everything doesn’t happen for a reason.  You cannot believe that if you’ve spent even two seconds reading the news.  There is no reason that a bad, truly evil person can have children and you can’t.  As soon as you can accept that, the sooner you can stop being angry and start realizing that, sometimes, life just isn’t fair.  Hey, I think I’ve heard that before….?

This isn’t an easy concept, and it even comes and goes in my own mind, but after we finally got pregnant, and miscarried right away, I went to a bad place.  I read a lot and thought a lot and I finally came to the conclusion that no one is controlling the outcome of my life.  It has been a really hard realization, and sometimes it makes me sad, but in the long run it makes me a lot less angry at the universe.  Less anger is always a good thing, especially when trying to conceive.  

I just have to work on yelling at the TV when someone in a movie says “but we only had sex once and now i’m pregnant!”  I like to yell “Good for YOU!” at the make believe characters.  It’s happening less and less though. Now I whisper it to myself like a totally sane person.  Totally sane!

I’m not saying that there isn’t some higher power out there running the big show, but think about the billions of people on this planet, all wanting different things.  Plus, there is a very high probability that there are billions of “people” on millions or billions of other planets.  Now, if you do the math, carry the one… that’s a lot of people/beings/things wanting stuff.  Have you ever seen Bruce Almighty? Yea, that would be a tough job.

If you are angrier or less forgiving than I appear to be right now, trust me, I am not like this all the time.  I did just have a chocolate chip cookie though, so that might be where my happy thoughts are coming from… hmm.  Maybe I should go eat a few more to keep the pep in my step…